Her Secret Past by Kerry Watts starts in 1990 with the murder of an elderly couple by their grandaughter Alice’s and her boyfriend David. Nearly 30 years later DI Jesse Blake and DC Dylan Logan are called to the scene of another double murder. They arrive to find the bodies of Malcolm and Jean Angus in their remote Perthshire farmhouse. Searching the couple’s property, Jessie learns about a vicious dispute with a nearby land owner, Rachel Ferguson, and when Jessie looks into Rachel further, she doesn’t expect what comes up. Rachel isn’t the person everyone thinks she is and a previous murder conviction just made her Jessie’s prime suspect. Alongside her frantic search to find the couple’s murderer Jessie’s life get even more complicated when her ex-husband suddenly reappears in her life bringing with him a new girlfriend.
This was a really good premise based around the idea of young girl involved in a heinous crime who is given another life. Yet the past always comes out in the end (in novels at least) and nobody is necessarily as innocent or as guilty as they may at first seem.
I enjoyed the story and liked the main characters of Jessie and Dylan. This is the first book I’ve read by Kerry Watt’s although it is the third in the series so I suspect that there is back story that I’ve missed, but that certainly didn’t spoil my enjoyment. They made a good team and I liked the way they bounced off each other.
The book frequently switched between time frames and all the different characters, yet despite all the complexity it was easy to keep track of them all thanks to the quality of the writing and how they were dealt with. I also felt that although there were some bits that clearly ended on a cliff-hanger ready for the next book on the whole everything was wrapped up nicely.
This was a good story that was a quick paced read with some great twists and turns, well worth a read! A big thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources and for a review copy.
Purchase Links
A crime readers blog 